Nigel is a retriever, so he retrieves... and retrieves!

Life is always better for Nigel when he has something in his mouth, be it a stick or a piece of paper. But best of all is if he has had to go and get it. Every gene in his golden retriever make-up strains to fetch things for people. To love him properly you have to celebrate and relish this.

Yellow tennis balls are his favourite. He is addicted to them. If I buy a new batch he can smell them even inside a shopping basket and becomes frantic with excitement. There must be something in the yellow dye that dogs particularly love because for the first halfhour he bites and drops and picks up the ball repeatedly, stimulating and releasing that swoony scent.

Then, once this initial delirium has worn off, he will rank them in order of preference; if I take three or four in my pockets when we go for a walk, he clearly differentiates between them, even though to my eye they look identical and are often caked in mud and worse.

Cricket is our favourite sport. I set off across the fields with my old school bat under my arm and whack a few of his tennis balls as far as I can, pretending to be disdainfully dispatching the very best that the Aussies can offer over long- on at Lord’s. Nigel runs as fast as he can and brings each one back so it can all happen again and again, until I worry about his heart and ease back a bit.

He also likes to bring me presents of his choosing. He visits waste- paper baskets, his bed, underneath hedges and shrubs, growing increasingly busy and seemingly distracted until he finds what he considers the ideal offering – usually a scrunched- up envelope or the current favoured tennis ball.

His gift-giving has always had a highly refined core. As a small puppy he would pick up a matchstick, a button or paperclip and bring it to me, but if I went to take it, he’d dart his head away, playing hard to get. Only when I’d made sufficient failed attempts to snatch the titbit and then feigned a total lack of interest (not hard to do) would it be spat on to my knee. Then he’d look expectantly. It was my turn to play the game. If I ignored him, he’d pick it up and then put it back, with an impatient foot shuffle and a small incredulous bark. Come on! I had to admire it profusely and then give it back, only for him to prance away, then turn and repeat the whole operation a few minutes later, again and again and again.

Nell jumping and Nigel (right) refusing to let go of his beloved tennis ball